Thank YOU, thank YOU, thank YOU. Hello Again! Welcome to another wonderful collaboration between East Side Story and The Post. Let me be the first to officially, whole-heartedly welcome you to the recap and recording of the 140th epic edition of East Side Storytellin’! Like the 139, I repeat … 139, previous shows East Side Story has put together, we all decided to take a break from our busy schedules all over town in order to sit back and relax and get everyone cultured up just right in the form of a Nashville writer reading from original prose, followed by an amazing local musician performing and talking about their original music, and then a round-up creative conversation with all featured guests of this event to talk about their individual journeys and personal ties to Nashville. Without further ado, fulfilling the entertainment portion of your day, this is the recap and recording of East Side Storytellin’ 140. Let us begin, again.
The first featured artist of the night is a Chicago native who now calls Nashville home. She has been making and teaching art for a long time in Nashville. I first found out about her and helped promote her work while she was the Director of the Marnie Sheridan Gallery at Harpeth Hall School. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MS in Museum Leadership from Bank Street College in NYC. She works with visual arts with collages, drawings, watercolors, oils and acrylics, jewelry, and more, but she’s featured tonight because of her art and poetry book published this past year by Sheriar Books by the title of Listening To The Bones: Poemeditations and Art. For someone who spends the majority of their time putting the spotlight on others, I was really excited for us to gather around and support this local treasure on this given night. Surrounded by loved ones and new friends to be, it was quite a warm welcome to the stage for the very talented Marla Faith.
Marla isn’t an artist or a human who hides from her truth. She lives her truth every second, and her light resembles the glow of a bright bulb that is ready to explode. Marla opened her set by calmly telling the crowd that her recent book is a collection of art that was inspired by her journey through stem cell and bone marrow transplants this past year while battling cancer and the brink of death. She is the type of person who is more afraid of not living her fullest life than the thought of death’s door being around the corner. Her words and paintings tell us that much. Marla told us even more.
Prefacing the crowd that the book is broken down into 3 main sections: 1) dark childhood memories, 2) her mother’s death, and 3) deeply personal spiritual material. With that knowledge out in the open, Marla was free to take the crowd anywhere she wanted to go. And she went there immediately. She took us back to a time involving old Florida, Poppy’s shed, palm tree backdrops, and souvenir photos with pet turtles and sea horses. She was the receptor of a lot of treasures, and she backed them all into The Post East and unloaded them on our tables. She then dove into grief, revealing a dual nature of death and the living, submerging oneself in water, suspended in time, with visuals of turtles burying their eggs in the sand … a natural rhythm of death and the living. Marla showed us how she danced the fine line between the two, and she went on to teach us even more appreciation for both via two extremely powerful poems titled “Despair & Hope” and “I Exist.” She explains that love is the only thing holding together and this universe up at all, and that no weight of any cloud can hold us down if we don’t want it to do so. Trust me. You really need to listen to the recording of the reading below and get a copy of Marla’s book ASAP!
Our featured music of the night is someone I have introduced before, specifically when he played a show at The Kitchen at Atomic Nashville last year when someone was out sick to introduce this man (shout out to Scot Sax). I’m glad that Scot is feeling better, but I’m really glad that he was sick that night. I was immediately enamored by this man’s music and stories. Like Scot, he is a man who wears many hats. This guy, not Scot, is the host and originator of the podcast for singer songwriters called The Hexagon. He is someone who has taken co-writing to the next level with his mediation/songwriting club we’ll have him speak more on later, but he is also one of the most genuine and most humble musicians I’ve met so far in a city filled with musicians at every corner. It was truly an honor to introduce for the first time on East Side Storytellin’ and the second time in general, the real deal, Jesse Correll.
Jesse, like the majority of the pairings on this show, picked up exactly where Marla dropped the mic. Jesse mentioned that his dark, oceanic themes, would perfectly reflect Marla’s words, and he was not joking. His set was pretty much the soundtrack to Marla’s book, ready to publish side by side. Jesse began with a meditative trance of melody and deep emotions in his first song that was anything but icy cold (inside pun, listen to the recording). He pulled our strings and set us up for one of my favorites of his.
And I’m talking about his song “My Arrested Heart.” Derived from a song prompt with the phrase “hope like adrenaline,” this song almost made me jump out of my seat. It’s a calling card to love and using everything within yourself to live your best life. When he sang, “I’ll use hope like adrenaline ’til my arrested heart beats in time,” I was ready to run straight home to tell my wife and child how much I love them. If that’s not a sure-fire way to judge the awesomeness value of a song, then I don’t know what it. Seriously, you really have to listen to this recording. Jesse went on to play several other hits that were prompted (another bad dad inside pun within the recording), and each one revealed the person Jesse has become through various experiences with adversity and life in general. Like Marla, Jesse is someone who runs towards life instead of running away from anyone or anything. One particular song that hit close to home with recent losses in both sides of my extended family (through blood and marriage), was the “Fetch the Water” song that only used 20 words or less. Like a brilliant poem, Jesse found away to do more with less and was spot on all the way through.
But whether it was true tales told through song and poem, or biopic history lessons about who we are now because of the people who were here in our place or helped us find our place way back when, Marla and Jesse were like two sides of the same coin on this particular evening. All heart and truth, shining as bright as the sun before it went to sleep for longer nights to dream of a better tomorrow. These two artists give me and others hope that we are all much stronger and more talented than we give ourselves credit for on the regular. They cut past all of the bullshit filters others think are important, and get to the point and core of why we are here … to love and help one another. I’d like to take the credit for pairing them together and having them share their art at just the right time for early voting and life/death in general as of late, but I know it goes way beyond me or any of us. There is a reason we are all here, together, and the reason is love. Thanks, Marla and Jesse, for that reminder of all reminders.
And so here is the edited recording of East Side Storytellin’ 140 that I’ve been reminding you to listen to its entirety. This recording is the brilliant reading by Marla Faith and the beautiful singing from Jesse Correll that took place at The Post East on Tuesday, October 16, 2018. Feel free to listen to it and share with everyone you know, over and over again. The tape won’t ever break, thanks to the internet. But let’s listen and share it so much that it breaks the internet, okay? Thanks.
Before I say goodbye for this round of fun, I’d like to give a big round of thanks for Marla and Jesse for sharing their stories, talents, and time with us.
You can keep up with Marla’s writing here – www.marlafaith.com
You can listen to more of Jesse’s music here – www.jessecorrell.com
You can listen to this show, edited, soon, alongside the previous shows too, on our website, www.eastsidestorytn.com, at our In Our Own Words Tab – see here – www.eastsidestorytn.com/in-our-own-words
I’ll keep the gratitude going for Tom Eizonas, my lovely wife and most talented artist in Emily Harper Beard (efharper), and everyone that came out live to support the show … and to everyone who has helped continue to spread the word and support the show online afterwards.
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to give one last shout out to Tonya and Chris for making The Post so welcoming and positively life-changing for the East Nashville community at large.
Our next show will be
East Side Storytellin’ 141
Tuesday, November 6 (Our 6th Anniversary Show!)
at The Post (1701 Fatherland Street) at 7pm
reading- Joe Pagetta
singing- Joe Pisapia
That said, that’s all for East Side Storytellin’ 140 and another fabulous event at The Post with East Side Story at the helm. Thanks for coming out and sharing the good word and giving some love to all of these great Nashville artists and our creative ideas. Please remember to be nice to one another out there. I repeat, please remember to be nice to one another. Thank you and goodnight.
Much love,
mE